Our Mission
The purpose behind Openhack is to, on one side show people interested in developing solutions how they can help to make a difference on both a local and global level with open source development as a main toolkit and on the other, to show aid organisations, governmental agencies and private sector actors how tech volunteers can be a vital part of their work. We aim to create a platform for collaboration where organisations and tech volunteers can meet, exchange ideas and knowledge and build solutions together.
Background
There are several challenges that we face to build a sustainable and secure future for tomorrow. These challenges are manifold, ranging from famines, poverty, unemployment, epidemics, considerable environmental changes and other complex political problems. There is no shortage of organizations and social actors working hard to solve these challenges and to help build a better world, in their own creative and honorable ways. Still, the growing complex and multidimensional aspects of these challenges call for new tools and methods to collaborate, share knowledge and to leverage available resources to increase the efficiency of such work.
by Nik
The rise of new technologies opens up new possibilities and ways of meeting these challenges, regardless of the field or nature of the problem. Just as technology and IT open great possibilities in our daily life, it can be used to help solve many of the challenges we face in the strive for a better tomorrow. At the same time the same technology has made it possible for people to collaborate and share their work more effectively, something that is perhaps most visible through the concept of open source communities.
Photo by NESA by Makers
The possibilities for eager solution developers to find available projects are often limited. Many of our case contributors and partner organizations clearly express interest in leveraging tech to create or better existing solutions but are often unable to attract the right talent or have a hard time define the project objective. This is where we believe we have a role to play, as facilitators and enablers.
Photo by Jon Tyson
THE POWER OF OPEN SOURCE
Open source is a term that originally referred to open source software (OSS): code that is designed to be publicly accessible—anyone can see, modify, and distribute the code as they see fit. OSS is developed in a decentralized and collaborative way, relying on peer review and community production as opposed to closed source, proprietary software.
Open source has grown to become a movement and a way of working that reaches beyond software production, using the values and the decentralized production model of OSS to find new ways to solve problems in their communities and industries. At Openhack, we harness this philosophy and attitude by engaging our partners and hacker community to dialogue and build solutions together.